John O'Connor is the Miami-based education reporter for StateImpact Florida. John previously covered politics, the budget and taxes for The (Columbia, S.C) State. He is a graduate of Allegheny College and the University of Maryland.
That means taking the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test — or its upcoming successor — in order to make apples-to-apples comparisons between school performance.
But do public school advocates need to be careful what they ask for?
Could requiring private school students to meet the same requirements as public school students undercut the legal basis for the 2006 Florida Supreme Court decision which ruled a broad private school voucher program unconstitutional?
The college remedial system is not preparing students for college level work and is a major impediment to earning a degree, according to a new report.
A new report says college remedial education programs are not working, often have no bearing on a student’s field of study and should be scrapped.
Instead, researchers from Complete College America argue, most students should have to take a set of core classes to prepare them for college. These courses should match up with the knowledge needed in the students chosen field of study — particularly math.
“The research is clear: Remedial education as it is commonly designed and delivered is not the aid to student success that we all hoped,” the report says. “It is time for policymakers and institutional leaders to take their cue from new research and emerging evidence-based practices that are leading the way toward a fundamentally new model of instruction and support for students who enter college not optimally prepared for college-level work.”
StateImpact Florida and the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting have been looking at remedial education at Florida colleges in a series of stories this month.
Indiana Superintendent of Public Education Tony Bennett has been selected to be Florida Commissioner of Education.
Citing his experience at many levels of education and his work on new, national Common Core standards, the State Board of Education unanimously chose Tony Bennett as Florida’s next education commissioner.
Board members said there will be no learning curve for Bennett when he takes over in Florida.
“I think Tony’s experience in being a teacher, a superintendent, a coach and a statewide elected leader brought a lot more real-time, real recent experience in terms of where we need to get to,” said board member Kathleen Shanahan.
Bennett lost his reelection bid to remain Indiana’s superintendent last month. Teachers opposed him for pushing test score-based evaluations, paying teachers based on those evaluations and other policies. Conservative voters opposed Common Core, which they believe will reduce local authority over education.
The Florida Department of Education released some administrator evaluation data for the 2011-12 school year on Dec. 5. This is the first time the state has released data for the new administrator evaluations. Continue reading →
Collier County schools superintendent Kamela Patton was one of those unhappy with the errors. She was also concerned that some districts have yet to report evaluation — amounting to about one-quarter of all teachers in the state.
Patton said school districts are open to changing education policy, according to the Naples Daily News, but that the state needs to get things sorted. From the story
“We keep saying to the state, we’re never against your thoughts, but get it right,” Patton said during a meeting with the Daily News’ editorial board.
Among concerns she mentioned was the fact that the largest district in the state — Miami-Dade County — is not included in the initial data. The data released Wednesday is preliminary and the district has yet to report its information to the state.
Patton also said, however, that a portion of the system aimed at determining a teacher’s impact on student learning — the so-called value-added model — appears to have worked.
Tony Bennett, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction, at Wednesday's Indiana State Board of Education meeting.
Next week the State Board of Education will interview finalists to become the next Florida education commissioner.
Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett, who lost his reelection bid, is one of three finalists and thought the front-runner for the post because of his ties to former Gov. Jeb Bush.
As a guy who is a Hoosier through and through, who spent all but one year of his professional life in Indiana, I had to ask myself how important it was to balance that issue between loving the role of state school chief and driving education policy for children of a state versus living in Indiana. And I don’t believe there are any other states in the country better than Florida to do what I love to do. I’m excited about it, but will it will be hard? Of course it’ll be hard. But on January 11, I have to make a pretty quick emotional and intellectual pivot. And that emotional and intellectual pivot is I have to put Indiana in my rear-view mirror if I’m selected. And I have to underscore, ‘if I’m selected’…
I’m thrilled that the opportunity exists, and I hope the opportunity works out. I hope that on [December] 12 that we have the opportunity to serve the state of Florida, and the children of Florida more importantly than anything.
The interview sheds light on the relationship between Bennett and Bush and also is interesting in hindsight for Bennett’s views on the political issues that may have led to his defeat in Indiana. The Q&A, after the jump.
Most people have heard about the problems with teacher evaluations or school report cards, but we've found errors in other state data as well.
Wednesday the Florida Department of Education unveiled statewide teacher evaluation data, part of a new law that overhauls how teacher performance is measured in Florida.
The agency held a press conference by phone to discuss the accomplishment.
And then the data quietly disappeared that afternoon.
The Florida Department of Education released some teacher evaluation data for the 2011-12 school year on Dec. 5. This is the first time the state has released data for the new mandatory teacher evaluations. Continue reading →
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